1. Field of the Invention
The apparatus of the present invention relates to drumsticks. More particularly, the present invention relates to a drumstick having improvements thereto including (a) an exterior finish of a hot stamp foil adhered to the exterior surface of the drumstick along its body and tapered portion, (b) a section of compressed densified substrate material for increasing the durability of the wear sensitive area of the drumstick; and (c) a butt end and tip of the stick which is uncolored for preventing marking drums and cymbals when the sticks are used Further, there is included the process for accomplishing these product features in the improved drumsticks.
2. General Background of the Invention
Traditional wooden drumsticks which have been used for decades to play drums, cymbals and a wide variety of percussion instruments have normally had a clear coating of lacquer, varnish, shellac, acrylic, wax, etc. over bare wood. In 1979, the Hot Sticks Manufacturing Co. introduced painted wooden drumsticks, consisting of hickory drumsticks which were painted with bright enamel finishes and then coated with a polyurethane overcoat for increased durability and improved feel in a drummer's hands. The nylon tip models of these painted drumsticks did not mark drumheads and cymbals when the tip was used as the playing surface, but the shoulder and butt end portions of the sticks could leave marks (paint residue) when they contacted drumheads and cymbals. For the wood tip models of these painted sticks, the tips were left unpainted and then coated with a clear protective topcoat. As was the case with nylon tip models, these sticks left no marks when only the tip was used, but the shoulder and butt end areas left undesirable residues when they came in contact with drums and cymbals.
During the time period from 1983 to present, several competing drumstick manufacturers imitated the Hot Sticks concept of the colored drumstick by introducing products with various color coats (mainly lacquers) over the entire drumstick (including the tip portion of the wood tip models), and they marked drumheads and cymbals to varying degrees, depending upon what color coat was applied. Certain major manufacturers made an issue of the "marking" problem in their advertisements, claiming that the type of finish they used was superior in this respect. In the last two years (1998 and 1999) the world's largest manufacturer of drumsticks (Vic Firth, Inc.) began to leave the tips of their colored wood tip sticks unpainted (thus imitating the Hot Sticks method), and launched a major ad campaign stating the benefits of this feature. It is at this point in the history of the development of the colored wooden drumstick market--where it has been undeniably demonstrated for two decades that colored drumsticks are appealing to a significant number of drummers, but that the "marks" created by the use of such drumsticks are generally considered undesirable--that a totally new approach to manufacturing colored wooden drumsticks utilizing hot stamp foil as a color coat to minimize marking problems seems justified.
Although hot stamp foil has been used as a cosmetic coating on pencils and has been used to print trademarks on drumsticks, a new application of use as a color coating to prevent markings shows unique features on drumsticks which is heretofore not found in the art.
During the research and experimentation stages of the drumstick foil-printing process, the opportunity to develop another major improvement in wooden drumstick design--that of reinforcing a portion of the drumstick which is subjected to extreme impact forces during normal use--was realized. It should be noted that several manufacturers have made, (or attempted to make) reinforced drumsticks throughout the years (U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,341,716; 3,608,419; 3,722.350; 3,859,887; 4,246,826; 4,320,688 and 5,179,237). Typically, a synthetic material is applied over the wood or molded around a portion of the stick, thereby increasing durability due to the synthetic material's strength and resilience as compared to that of wood. Another variation of the reinforced stick is the stick that has been manufactured from "densified" wood, which consists of laminated wood with individual layers compressed and then glued together. With increased density, the wood becomes more durable, but then is much heavier and more cumbersome. The densified wood requires more force and effort to play with than the traditional drumstick and has therefore not found favor with the majority of drummers. As one might imagine, both the synthetically reinforced sticks and the densified wood sticks are more expensive to produce than traditional wooden sticks and therefore come at a higher cost to the consumer. While the goal of these designs--to prolong the usable life of a drumstick--is an appropriate one, both methods alter the response, balance, and feel of the favored traditional drumstick and, at the same time, make it more expensive. For these reasons, consumers have not as yet accepted such designs to a statistically significant degree. The current invention addresses the disadvantages of the various past attempts at reinforcement by simply compressing the surface layers of a section of the drumstick, thereby creating an area of increased density and hardness to improve the stick's impact resistance.